Barry Streek Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils has told his Director General, Mike Muller, to break the law if it is necessary to implement his department’s water programmes. Kasrils admitted in August that there had been underspending on water programmes and said they were being implemented too slowly because of problems with […]

Khadija Magardie Watching her willowy teenaged daughter and her gurgling grand-daughter playing together, Veronica’s* eyes glisten with tears. The soft-spoken woman says simply: “When I see them together, so happy, I ask myself time and time again, why did this happen?” Her daughter, Sibongile, is HIV-positive. So is her six-month-old grandchild, Tinashe. The baby was […]

Leslie Tilley looks at whether there are any safe bets left when it comes to investing Forget previous investment strategies: the world economy has entered a new era and in the process pushed aside the financial tenets of the past. The September 11 attack on the United States has caused a paradigm shift in Western […]

Drew Forrest The fascinating African National Congress document targeting an “ultra-left tendency” in the labour movement and the South African Communist Party is the latest broadside in a decades-old battle in the South African left over the role of trade unions. It revives conflicts in and outside the union movement in the 1980s between “populists” […]

Born in Trinidad, he had a breakdown at Oxford but went on to build a reputation as a world-class novelist. More recently, his personal life has come under scrutiny, his views have drawn accusations of racism and homophobia, and he has found himself at the centre of a literary feud. Maya Jaggi on an outspoken […]

ATHLETICS Martin Gillingham Let me tell you a true story. There’s this national leader who approaches the president of a global sports body and pleads him to stage his world championships in his country. “But you haven’t got a stadium big enough,” replies the sports boss. “I know,” says the politician, “but if you give […]

Washington wants to keep its friends, reports Hugo Young, but on its terms I do not think that many of us, even now, completely understand what has happened to the United States. We saw the pictures, we know the numbers, we heard the president’s vows to smoke Osama bin Laden out of his cave, and […]

analysis Sean Jacobs and Jessica Blatt The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the United States retaliation in Afghanistan have resulted in an outpouring of patriotism in the US, among African-Americans as much as anyone else. But the crisis has also put African-Americans in some odd and uncomfortable positions. Recent weeks have been […]

Matthew de Wet The recent attacks in the United States have placed stock markets under significant pressure. This has opened up a number of opportunities for investors and capital is flowing from the equity markets into the perceived safe havens of money market deposits and bonds. The fact is, however, that interest rates in the […]

The Afghanistan squad saw no reason to cancel their Pakistan tour Luke Harding in Peshawar In a scruffy cricket ground in the frontier town of Peshawar, a group of young men with beards are playing cricket. Things are not going well in their homeland: there is drought, famine and American bombardment. On the cricket pitch […]